


Beneath the Snow

by 3BeesAndCoffee3



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Caretaking, Fever, Fluff, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter is Manipulative, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Kinda, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Near Death Experiences, Nightmares, Season 1 Hannibal, Season/Series 01, Sexual Tension, Sickfic, Sleepwalking Will Graham, Soft Hannibal Lecter, Someone Help Will Graham, Will Graham Has Encephalitis, no actual death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:29:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27128581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3BeesAndCoffee3/pseuds/3BeesAndCoffee3
Summary: His body is exhausted, physically drained and begging to collapse into the pile of soft, wet snow. He’s not sure he could, even if he wanted to, his bones stiff and his legs locked and numb. He’s not even sure he can feel them well enough to bend.AKA - Will Graham is suffering from Encephalitis, and Hannibal finds him half frozen in the snow.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 14
Kudos: 334





	Beneath the Snow

**Author's Note:**

> Just an angsty one-shot bc there’s not enough hurt!will and hurt/comfort in this fandom. I love my boy hurt, sorry.

The cold has soaked through the layers of clothing, deep into his skin. He can’t even feel himself shivering anymore, though the tremor is enough of a reminder. 

The snow is well past Will’s knees where he’s standing, piled high from winter winds. Part of him wishes it was still snowing, it’s always warmer when it snows. Now, the air is fierce, and the cold wind bites at his skin like blisters. His fingers have gone numb at his sides, eyes unfocused from staring too long into the thick of the surrounding woods, into the trees that look stark in comparison to the blinding white of the snow. It’s not a clear night, and even still the snow is reflective and bright, a never ending sea. 

His body is exhausted, physically drained and begging to collapse into the pile of soft, wet snow. He’s not sure he could, even if he wanted to, his bones stiff and his legs locked and numb. He’s not even sure he can feel them well enough to bend. 

Distantly, he can hear the whines and howls his of his dogs. It’s far away, carried by the wind in the vast emptiness. He thinks vacantly that they should be asleep at such a late hour, piled up at the foot of his bed or by the door, but thinking about it too much makes his head throb and that metallic taste lights up on the back of his tongue again. 

He’s starting to feel tired though, finally. Tired all the way through his body and his mind. It feels good. There’s a numb kind of warmth crawling up his body, and it’s almost to his neck now. Inching up, up, up. He wants to welcome it. 

His ears are ringing, filled with white noise and the languid echo of his own breathes. There’s another noise, almost as distant as the dogs he no longer hears, but it’s somehow slightly more jarring. 

He just wants to sleep, even his dreams won’t let him have peace. It makes Will’s head spin. He’s so tired, so, so tired. 

Every night is a never ending tirade of blood hot and wet between his fingers, torn skin and the cries of bodies long dead. Sometimes, he looks in the mirror, edging between sleep and waking, and he doesn’t see himself looking back. 

He craves just letting go. 

He thinks he’s closer to that release now, though. The warmth has climbed up into his neck, the veins feel hot under his skin, like a live wire buzzing away. His breathing feels a little more like a chore, but it’s not an unwelcome feeling. He focuses on each inhale, the icy air sharp in his lungs. The exhales aren’t any warmer, the condensation no longer leaves his mouth is puffs. thinks he might close his stinging eyes, the cold wind drying them out until there are no tears left to run down his face. 

There’s the sound again, though. It’s closer now, more intrusive. It’s like a bad memory he wants to file away and forget, but he can’t quite ignore. 

For the first time in what seems like a very long time, Will feels his legs jerks. He feels them try to buckle under him, trying to lay him down in the bed beneath him. There’s part of him that thinks that might be okay. It might be nice, to let that icy, numb feeling be the only feeling. He wants to let it consume him wholly until that’s all there ever was- There’s another part of him that’s still straining for the noise. 

A branch breaks behind him, close enough that Will moves, body jerking involuntarily away from the threat. His boots stick in the icy hole of snow he’s stranded himself in, causing himself to nearly topple over into the bank. He can’t feel his legs like he should, his toes feel practically nonexistent. His vision swims, unable to focus on anything closer than his own hands, stiff and aching. Moving hurts, which is an alarming discovery, a drastic change from the near euphoria he’d been experiencing only moments ago. 

There’s a shape moving just beyond his line of sight, moving quick and purposefully toward him. He wants to move, wants to run. His brain screams that he should but his body feels like glass. 

“Will!”

Will breathes out, slowly through gritted teeth. Something not unlike panic floods his chest, simmering deep in his gut. He’s not dreaming, he realizes, as the shape comes closer, clearer now. Part of him thinks he knew that. 

His knees do buckle, then, and he collapses rather ungracefully into the snow. It’s icy and hardened unlike when it had first fallen, it cuts into the exposed skin of his face and everything sounds like a far off thought. He can’t see, but he can’t tell if that’s because he’s face down in snow or if his eyes are closed. Every part of his body wants to cave, exhaustion eating at every part of him. 

He feels through frozen layers of clothes, a hand clasp firmly over his shoulder. Hannibal pulls him up carefully from the snow, at least enough that his head is no longer resting in the ice and snow. He feels very light, in that moment. He isn’t sure he weighs anything at all. 

“Am I dreaming?” Will croaks, and his voice sounds like he’s been screaming endlessly. It feels like it, too. Maybe he has. 

“No, you are very much awake,” Hannibal hushes, pulling Will into a semblance of a sitting position, his weight mostly pressed into Hannibal’s chest, who Will realizes foggily is also now kneeling in the snow. “Your name is Will Graham, you are awake, you’re in the woods outside your house.”

Will doesn’t remember going to sleep. He doesn’t remember getting up and stumbling into the woods, either. 

“You’re safe, though slightly frozen,” Hannibal continues, and it’s then that Will realizes how much he’s shaking, shivering almost violently against Hannibal’s body. 

“I don’t remember,” Will rasps. Everything is so foggy it’s hard to form a coherent thought. He’d be somewhat more frantic if he didn’t feel so distant. He’s so tired. 

“Yes, you lost time,” Hannibal says, pushing a mess of curls from Will’s eyes so he can study his face for a moment. Will doesn’t ask how he found him, how he knew. “Come, let’s get you inside, it would be rather unfortunate if you were to die of hypothermia.”

Will’s eyes are unfocused again, only half open, the closest he can get to lucid, but he thinks Hannibal is smiling. Will hums in response, gravely. 

He does make a sound like a wounded animal when Hannibal lifts him, his body angry and frozen. He feels like a statue, too still for too long to be moved now. 

Hannibal hushes him, whispering apologizes as he trudges back through the snow, Will in his arms. Everything aches deep in his limbs, everything burning and raw. Every time he’s jostled he feels a wave of pain wash through his head, even with Hannibal cradling him rather closely. 

He thinks he hears someone talking, but it sounds far away and foreign. His head lulls to the side and he physically can’t seem to straighten it again, so he lets himself go limp. He isn’t sure when he blinks in and out of consciousness or for how long, but the voice becomes stronger and more pressing and he thinks it must be Hannibal speaking, but the words are jumbled and still so distant, he doesn’t have the energy to strain to hear him. 

There’s a struggle once they finally get to the steps, Hannibal trying to hold Will steady in his arms while making it safely up the icy stairs takes time, and Will isn’t entirely in control of the wounded sounds that fall from his frozen lips when Hannibal jostles him too much. 

“I know, stay with me just a bit longer,” Hannibal says gently as he pushes open the door. His voice is still distant and distorted but he’s at least able to make out the words now- not that he can manage to form his own. 

Inside the house is dark, the lights all out like Will should be asleep in bed, tucked away and warm. 

Once they step inside fully, Will’s lungs fill with air that is much too hot, much to fast, and he lets out a strangled noise, attempting to turn his face farther into Hannibal’s chest. It burns through his nostrils and down into his lungs like it’s molten. It hurts, raw and sharp and it’s too much. 

“I know, easy,” Hannibal says, running a hand through Will’s hair again as he carries him to the couch. “I need to warm you up, do you understand?” He asks, gently laying Will down on the couch. His body sinks into the warn cushions, body too tired to fight. He’s not even shaking anymore. 

Will manages a sound that’s something of a confirmation, though breathing still hurts and his ears are ringing so loud it’s hard to focus on what Hannibal is saying. 

“Good, let’s get you out of these clothes,” Hannibal says, kneeling down to quickly work off Will’s jacket. He realizes through a fog of pain and delirium that all of his clothes are soaked through, fabric stiff from freezing. At least he’d been wearing a jacket. “I need you to stay a wake a while longer, Will.”

Will tries to nod along, but even that aches terribly, throbbing behind his eyes. He’s grateful that Hannibal has left the lights off. 

Hannibal has to lift Will’s arms to get his shirt off, and he feels like a doll being maneuvered around. It’s quickly replaced by a blanket he’d kept over the back of the couch, Hannibal taking extra care to wrap it around his frozen torso as he moves to Will’s shoes and socks. 

He whines like a wounded dog when feeling starts returning to the tips of his fingers, under the blanket, like liquid fire lapping at his skin. “It hurts,” Will slurs, eyes pinching closed in pain as Doctor Lecter pulls off the first boot, revealing his dripping sock, clinging to his feet. 

“I know, I’m terribly sorry,” Hannibal says in response, and there’s a sincerity in his voice that’s somehow jarring. “We need to get you warm, though. Unless you would prefer loosing limbs?”

Will grunts in response, trying to focus on anything other than the burn of his skin. At the very least, breathing has become less a chore and less painful, now his throat just feels raw. 

Hannibal makes quick work of pulling his other shoe off, followed by both socks. He hardly feels it at all, even with Hannibal’s warm hands on him. After that it’s a little harder, having to pull Will partly off the couch to shimmy his pants down far enough that he can pull them the rest of the way off with him sitting. Will feels a sense of shame dimly in the back of his head at being stripped naked in his living room, but the knowledge that he’d almost just frozen himself to death is distracting enough that he cares a little less. 

Once he’s down to his boxers, which are thankfully not soaking wet, Hannibal takes off his own coat and lays it over Will’s lap, where the blanket can’t cover. He stands, stretching briefly as he does. Will’s eyes follow the action groggily. “I’m going to get you some warm clothes and get some tea made, I’ll be right back.”

“‘Kay,” Will breathes, trying to press himself further into the couch. Even with only his fingers beginning to thaw, his teeth have started chattering and the shivering is returning slowly but surely, wracking his body with tremors as a sweat breaks out across his skin. 

He’s not sure how long Hannibal is gone, having to tilt his head back and focus on breathing so he doesn’t cry. He feels feverish, clammy and numb in a way he can’t quite explain. He’s shaking so badly it physically hurts, teeth clamping shut with what little strength he has to stop them from clattering loudly in his mouth. 

Winston is at his feet, close enough that Will can feel the warmth radiating off the dogs body. 

He remembers being a child, playing in the snow for far too long in thin cotton gloves until his fingers were pink and frozen. He remembers holding his hands under the kitchen sinks warm water and how he thought it was the most miserable feeling in the world, that tingling, too hot and icy cold feeling that made everything like fire. He wants to laugh and how naive he’d been then, because this is so, so much worse. 

He almost wishes he was still laying in the snow, cold and numbing. It’s better than the clawing feeling of his blood trying to return to his frozen body, nerves fried and in overdrive. 

Will tries to curl into himself as if it might make the feeling less intense, but his body feels like lead, and he really only makes his head throb until white spots dance behind his eyes. 

“How are you feeling?” Hannibal asks, returning to the room then, arms full of neatly folded clothes. 

“Cold,” Will stutters, teeth chattering too hard to let him get the words out properly. 

“I have to say, I’m unsurprised,” Hannibal responds, brow creasing. “Here, let’s get you dressed, hm?” 

Will agrees, though getting him re-dressed is somehow more humiliating. Hannibal works quickly and quietly, though. The same precision as always, as he dresses Will in far too many layers. He feels cocooned by time he’s dressed and piled up under at least five blankets. Will isn’t even sure where he found that many. 

“Better?” Hannibal asks, looking over Will with what might be amusement, if not slightly laced with concern. 

“Kinda,” Will manages, though the words are still thick and slurred between his clenched teeth. 

Hannibal hums before stepping over into Will’s kitchen and pouring a cup of something hot and steaming into a mug and returning to Will’s side. “I see you have no tea,” Hannibal says, slightly bemused. 

“M’coffee person,” Will mutters, wincing as he tries to force his hands open and closed. Everything’s stiff. 

“Instant coffee,” Hannibal corrects. He sits down beside Will, then. He sinks into the couch just beside where Will has curled himself into a ball, squished between the throw pillows. “I made hot chocolate. Caffeine is the last thing you need now.” Hannibal holds the mug up to Will’s lip and he feels his heart jump awkwardly in his throat. “I made sure it’s not too hot, but this should help warm you up.”

Will takes a tentative sip, trying to push the embarrassment of being hand fed, far away. He can’t hold the mug, after all. He can hardly make a loose fist, holding a mug of hot liquid would be a disaster. It’s surprisingly good when it hits his tongue, and not actually that hot, either. He’s not sure what Hannibal managed to find in his kitchen that let him make cocoa, but he’s thankful for it as he takes another drink. It settles warm in his belly as Hannibal holds the cup for him to drink from. He’s almost finished it before he knows it, eyes heavy and his head foggy.

He’s not shivering quite so badly anymore and Winston has scooted in more so he’s laying on Will’s feet, clad in three pairs of socks. 

“Better?” Hannibal asks, taking the mug back and setting it aside. 

It disturbs Will from his haze of fatigue and he hums, nodding slightly. The scratch to his throat is soothed too. “Yeah, kinda,” he says. He feels more exhausted than he can ever recall feeling. It’s as if the feeling hit him all at once and it’s now a physical effort to keep his eyes open. 

“Good,” Hannibal adjusts one of the blankets so it’s cushioning Will’s head like a pillow. 

“Thank you,” he says, groggily. He can’t quite muster the embarrassment and dread of being inconvenient right now, but he’s sure it’ll be ripe by morning. The knowledge of his helplessness setting in, the way Hannibal watched and tended to him wordlessly. For now he just says it because he should, he thinks. He his thankful. 

“For what, helping you?” Hannibal asks, and Will isn’t looking at his face but he can picture it almost perfectly as he stares hazily at the ceiling. 

“Everything,” Will says. He means it. The word has more meaning than either of them want to delve into now. 

“Get some rest, William.”

Will sighs softly, the flush of his face and neck as he warms up fully makes him somehow more sleepy. He weighs a ton, each finger is too much to lift, his eyelids are too much of a chore to open anymore and his thoughts are muddled and round-about, so he listens to Hannibal’s breathing and his own, listens to his dogs settle in at their feet, and lets himself slip into exhaustion. 

He sleeps heavily. If he dreams at all, it’s only of ink black skies and white noise that fills his ears. He doesn’t wake once in the night, not from nightmares or his skin slick with fever. He doesn’t wake early like he usually does, either. Doesn’t stir when the dogs whine and paw at him. He has no idea how long he sleeps, but when his eyes finally crack open, it takes physical effort. The room is dim, but he can see streaks of light coming from in between the curtains, all pulled shut. He’s still on the couch, though he’s migrated into a more laying down position. 

He yawns, stretches awkwardly under the pile of blankets he’d fallen asleep in as he slowly wakes more. His skin feels too tight in places, fingers and toes slightly swollen. His body still aches mildly, every muscle sore and tired. He knows it could’ve been much worse, though. He wonders how long he would have had if Hannibal hadn’t found him. 

He realizes he doesn’t know what time it is, no watch or phone on him, a realization that is quickly followed by the realization of a solid weight against his legs. Hannibal is sitting beside Will still, much in the same way he had been the night before, though his body is lax and his jacket is thrown over himself like a blanket. He’s asleep, head resting against the back of the couch, his side leaning into where Will has stretched his legs out in the night. There are several hot packs scattered on the couch, which he’s fairly sure weren’t there when he’d fallen asleep. There’s a thermometer and two mugs on the coffee table, a book or two there too. He feels still impossibly exhausted, but there’s something sobering about having Doctor Lecter asleep on his couch. He wonders guiltily how late he had been up tending to Will. 

“Feeling better?” Hannibal asks, eyes still closed. His voice is thick still with sleep, gravely and deep. 

Will pulls his eyes away. He finds his dogs fed and happily resting again on the floor around the living room. “A bit,” Will manages. His throat feels like sandpaper. 

“Mm, I’m glad,” Hannibal murmurs, making no moves to look at Will or open his eyes at all. “You had a long night.”

Will wants to argue that Hannibal likely had longer, but he doesn’t. His joints feel stiff and slightly swollen, head still pulsing slightly behind his eyes, but overall, he finds the damages to be far less than he’d originally thought. “Thank you,” he says again. 

“No need to thank me, Will.”

It’s a lie, plain and simple. Will doesn’t even know where to begin on how many reasons he has to thank Hannibal-apologize to him. Every thank you he can think of falls so very flat, though. 

“What time is it?” Will asks after a long stretch of silence. 

Hannibal opens his eyes then, pulling his phone from his pocket. The light from his phone bright enough that Will squints, watching it reflect blindingly off of Hannibal’s face. “10:32,” Hannibal says, slipping the device back in his pocket. 

It’s earlier than Will thought, truthfully. 

“Are you still tired?”

“I don’t know,” Will sighs, working his hand from the Cocoon of blankets so he can scrub at his face. “Everything feels weak and exhausted.”

“I’d imagine,” Hannibal says, sitting up straighter to look at Will. “You were out there for a very long time, Will. You were suffering from the early stages of hypothermia.”

He knows it’s true, he’d even known that distantly last night, but it all still feels like a dream. “Should I check for all my toes?” Will jokes wryly. 

“I only had to cut a few off, lucky for you,” Hannibal says, the corner of his mouth coming up into a smirk. “You should rest more, Will.”

Will sighs and nods. He’s already drowsy again, only minutes after waking up. His body demands it. 

“I can help you to your bed, if you’d like?”

Something twists in Will’s chest and he shakes his head. “No, it’s fine,” he flexes his fingers and toes experimentally, finds feeling returned to the limbs again. The weight of Hannibal on the couch next to him, their bodies still pressed together, is strangely calming. He doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to break this air of tension between them. 

“Are you comfortable like this?”

“Yeah, m’fine,” Will yawns. “I’ve slept on my fair share of couches.”

Hannibal hums, reaches out to Will and presses the back of his hand to his forehead. “It seems your fever is broken,” he says, settling back into the couch. 

Will stares at the doctors hand for a moment too long, watching practiced fingers fold in his lap. 

“Rest, I’ll take care of the dogs,” Hannibal says, pulling himself up from the couch, stretching his limbs out as he does. 

Will isn’t terribly worried about the dogs. If they’ve already been fed and taken outside by Hannibal that morning, they’ll likely be fine for most of the day, nosing around the apartment. Maybe, slightly annoyed with Will for not taking them on a run. He’s slightly more concerned about what might come if he lets himself drift again. He can’t trust himself to sleep soundly, either tormented by nightmares or waking up in a field, miles away from his home. His mind feels frayed, and when he looks up at Hannibal, having been quiet for far too long now, he’s smiling down at him. 

“Don’t worry, I’m capable of watching over you, too,” Hannibal says, something playing behind his eyes as he leans in over Will, his forehead coming to rest against the mess of Will’s curls. 

Will shudders, eyes closing. “I can’t trust myself,” Will breathes. He’s coming unhinged, cracking and breaking off in shards and he can’t put himself back together anymore. 

“Can you trust me?” Hannibal asks, lowly. His hand moves to cup the back of Will’s skull, cradling. His touch feels like warm honey over Will’s skin. 

He should say no- all signs say that, no, he shouldn’t trust Hannibal. He shouldn’t give Hannibal an inch, but he somehow finds himself giving him a mile. He breathes out slowly, breath stuttering. “Yes,” he breathes, mind feverish. He can’t put himself back together anymore, too broken and splintered, the pieces all blend together in the wreckage. 

Hannibal can, though. 

“I trust you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked this! Please let me know what you thought down in the comments and feel free to throw some angsty ideas at me.


End file.
